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  • How to deal with abuse and harassment


     

    What is abuse?

    Abuse occurs when someone or something intentionally harasses or bothers you in violation of the Second Life Terms of Service (ToS) or the Community Standards (CS).  Abuse is also sometimes referred to asgriefing.

    Fortunately, in Second Life you control many aspects of your environment: You control your avatar and what it experiences. The best way to prevent harassment or abuse is to use your settings to control your environment and who can interact with you.

    Important: When you are the subject of abuse or harassment, stay  calm and follow the steps outlined in this article. Don't panic!

    Reporting abuse

    Although it won't stop an ongoing incident, please report cases of abuse.  Choose Help > Report Abuse to file an abuse report. Provide as much detail as possible.  For more information, see Filing an abuse report.

    Tip: You can report a person or object for abuse by right-clicking on them and choosing Report Abuse. Doing this automatically logs the subject's name and exact location in the abuse report.

    Merchant fraud and other scams

    In addition to inworld griefing, be on guard for shopping fraud and other scams, both inworld and in Second Life Marketplace. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

    See also:

    Setting privacy preferences

    privacy1.jpgYou have a lot of control over what others can see about you in Second Life. Doing this can help to prevent unwanted intrusions and harassment. To set your privacy preferences in the Second Life Viewer:

    1. Choose Me > Preferences
    2. Click the Privacy tab.
    3. Set your preferences.
    4. Click OK.

    For more information, see:

    If the person is nearby inworld

    First, simply ask the person to stop their abusive activity.  

    If that doesn't work, try leaving the area. You may wish to put a a safe location in your Viewer's favorites bar for quick access.

    Finally, you can block the person:

    1. Right-click the offending avatar and choose Block.  See Blocking for more information. 

      Blocking stops voice and text chat and any visual interference from their avatar and their objects. If you have enabled avatar impostors in your graphics preferences, blocking an avatar also replaces it with a flat gray outline (an "impostor").
       
    2. Choose Help > Report Abuse and file an abuse report about the incident. 

      Provide as much detail as possible.  See Filing an abuse report for more information. 

    If you are being physically pushed inworld

    If someone (or something) is pushing you or physically assaulting you inworld, sit down! Sitting prevents most physical forces from affecting your avatar.

    Simply right-click on the ground or something else nearby and choose Sit Here.

    If you're being harassed in voice chat 

    If someone is harassing you in voice chat, mute them as follows:

    1. Choose Communicate > Voice settings... to open the VOICE SETTINGS window.
    2. Mouse over the listing for the person you want to mute.
    3. Right-click their name and choose Block Voice.

    If you are being harassed by an object

    Finding the object with beacons

    beacons1.jpgIf you are being griefed by an object emitting particles or sounds, do the following:

    1. Select World Show Beacons
      The BEACONS window opens.
    2. Under For these objects: select Sound sources andParticle sources

    Now objects emitting sounds are shown in yellow and objects emitting particles are shown in blue. Click the ?button in the BEACONS window for more details.

    Finding invisible objects

    If you see the beacons but not the source object:

    1. Choose World > Show > Advanced Menu to enable the Advanced menu.
    2. Chooose Advanced > Highlighting and Visibility > Highlight Transparent or press Ctrl-Alt-T.

    Doing this makes invisible objects visible and highlighted red. You can see many particle and sound sources with this tool.

    Finding underground objects

    To see objects stuck underground:

    1. Choose Advanced > Rendering Types
    2. Deselect Surface Patch or press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-5.

    Doing this hides the ground so that you can see beneath it.

    Other tips

    The following may also help:

    • Choose Advanced > Disable Camera Constraints, to let you to move the camera beyond normal parameters.
    • Deselect Advanced > Limit Select Distance, to let you to select objects normally outside your reach.

    Dealing with the object

    Once you locate the griefing object, block it. This stops all sound and text chat from the object:

    1. Right-click on the object.
    2. Choose Manage > Block.
    Tip: To hide bothersome particles, choose Advanced > Highlighting and Visibility > Hide Particles or press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-=

    You can also try to contact the owner of the object.  

    1. Right-click on the object.
    2. Choose Object Profile.
    3. Click on the owner's name to view their profile.  
    4. Click IM button in their profile and ask them to remove or edit the object.

    If you are being animated 

    If you are being animated against your will, choose Me > Movement > Stop Animating Me.

    Preventing abuse on your land

    If you are a landowner, there are a number of things you can do to prevent abuse and harassment from occuring on your land.  Both parcel and region owners can restrict entry to people who are at least 18 years old.  For more information, see Age restriction parcel and estate management features.

    If you are a parcel owner

    parcel controls2.jpgIf you have the necessary rights, you can restrict who can enter your land, and freeze, ban, or eject others from land you own or control.  For more information, seeManaging other Residents on your land.

    It's good practice to deselect Object Entry.  This stops people from dropping or shooting objects onto the land, and prevents moving objects from crossing into it from a neighboring parcel.

    You can also restrict who is able to build on your land:

    1. Choose World > About Land or just right-click on the ground and choose About Land.
    2. Click the OPTIONS tab.
    3. Deselect Allow other Residents to: Build.

    If you are a region or estate owner / manager

    region controls1.jpg

    As a region owner or an estate manager, you have even more control over who can access your land and what they can do on it.  

    As an estate manager, you can restrict access to certain Residents or group members, ban specific Residents, kick out a specific Resident, and so on.  

    To access these controls:

    1. Choose World > Region / Estate.
    2. Click the Estate tab.

    As a region owner or manager, you can block people from editing terrain (terraforming), flying, pushing, and so on.  To access these controls:

    To access these controls:

    1. Choose World > Region / Estate.
    2. Click the Region tab.

    Additional tips

    If you are experiencing a griefing attack, and need time to kick and ban troublemakers:

    1. Choose World > Region / Estate.
    2. Click the Debug tab.
    3. Select Disable Scripts and Disable Collisions
    Note: Disabling scripts will temporarily stop all scripted objects in the region from functioning. However, as soon as you re-enabled scripts for the region, they will resume normal operation again.



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